Sunday, September 23, 2007

So let me just start by saying I HATE Halo. *dodges flying tomatoes and a water buffalo* wtf?! A water buffalo? Ok I get it, I am the only one! > . Anyway I was checking gamespot.com for another game I am awaiting and saw they have a review up for Halo 3. I am pretty certain there is not any spoilers in it. Course having never played it I am not exactly an authority on the subject. But anyway here it is:

Friday, September 21, 2007

While persuing the forums today I came upon Honey Kitty's ad for her new witch costumes. I waited patiently for Trin to get into work (Damn you timezones!) and sent it over saying "we should get these." And so we did. Wow that's not even a slightly interesting story. Let me make up a better one. [[ HONEY KITTY Fukuoka Tenjin (168, 242, 5)]]

Once upon a time there were 3 witches. A purple witch named Draconic, an orange witched named Trinitee and a pink witch named Noamianna (what's female for Noam?). These three witches lived in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Often they would go to central park and sit on the water literally, because they could do that since they were magic.

Here they would plot about witchy things, like wart removers and recipes for eye of newt, what was going on with Britney Spears and when the new Project Runway season was going to start. They didn't exactly do any magic, though they did carry large wands. Possibly compensation for something. I won't say what. It might sound like enis penvy.

Then while prancing around and saying "Teehee" with Trinitee in a graveyard, Noamianna made the innocent mistake of suggesting that orange is not Trinitee's color. The Orange witch Trinitee turned Noamianna into a toad for her foul remarks. But she made a very cute toad. So villagers rejoiced! And ate cake. And Project Runway was rumored to begin in November. The End.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Sunday, September 16, 2007

So this week we got on the planet fashion feed and that feed is evil as it makes you want to buy things. O_O Girl things... Well not girl things but.. nevermind. CLOTHES! I haz buy them!

After getting locked out of Noam last night when our sim went down. I hopped on the mouff, shopped, and made 2 outfits, but one was made up entirely of the the most recently blogged and I didn't want to repeat stuff. Here is the other one!

The best find of all last night were these boots! They are scripted so you can change the flowers on each boot. I found them in the Lico Lico sim, which is a sim chock full of loli stuff. Bootstrap has a store there near my shop that I set up last night.

Friday, September 14, 2007

Not sure how successful my last article was on one of my favorite outfits that i was wearing.. but that's ok cuz I have another. Just cuz I like it.. definitely means you don't have to if you don't want to. I'm far from a fashionista and feel everyone comes up with different things while trying to mix and match. So I had this one put together awhile.. just held onto it for a lil bit. Figure if you don't like everything.. you might find one lil thing you like and can go buys it! yay for buying stuff!!

Not to mention keeps Noam quiet and not making us cry like babies cuz we don't blog. haha j/k Noam! <3

So I present to you the outfit I call... Brownie. (ghey.. i know but too bad that's just all I could think of :P )

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Trinitee and I were chatting today over AIM while pretending to work and the topic of bad SL snapshots came up. Now, I said "I smell a blog post" and she said "You get on top of that" which is pretty much equivalent of calling "not it" or "Shotgun" thus hosing me into making a blog post about taking snapshots. She's a lazy crafty one.

Now, this is not rocket science and I really don't mean to talk down to anyone, but lets cover some basics of the 4 time settings that you can force the sun at. You find "FORCE SUN" Under world in the upper toolbar.

Sun rises in the East

Sun sets in the West.

At Noon, the sun is at it's apex (and your shadow is the smallest)

At midnight there is no sun

The pictures included in this post are of an avatar facing a certain direction during these 4 times of day. Note that I said avatar and not camera. Your camera will face the opposite way if you are looking head on at your avatar. (I just noticed I misspelled Sunrise on the image... damn it!)

Now you can see the shifts in shadows depending on where you face and what time of day it is. Sometimes it comes off as awesome mood lighting and other times it comes off as what I like to call "low contrast fugly." When the sun is set at noon you can see a lot of the L.C.F.s especially on the face.There is a cure for the LCFs, and it is known as a face light. These you can find all over SL, infact it's becoming pretty common that skin makers give out face lights with their skins. The effect is a light source evenly on the face to get rid of any weird shadows the sun may cast.Now if you can't find one, and are capable of building, it's incredibly easy to make your own. You will need an alpha-clear texture and nothing else. Make 3 small prims and position them around your face. Link them together and activate the lighting option on the prims. If you have the alpha on the prim you can activate highlight transparent (Under View on the top toolbar) and view the prims. Here is what my face light looks like and the light values I used.Ignore the massive amount of fleas on my ear... I have a hygiene issue. Anyway, you can see how far this one is spaced from my face and the kinds of prims used to give an even light source. The settings I have mine at might not be the best for you, so play around with it. I found many face lights in my inventory ranging from "light up the whole damn sim" to "subtle glow." it's up to you, but I recommend not to make them too bright that people near by might mistake you for an angel or alien... or other things that glow. Glow worms... those were great...

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Hullo! I haven't been all that active on the blog, and I haven't added anything new to the Bivouac in ages now, but all this does not mean I haven't been doing anything at all!

On the contrary, I've been playing Metroid.

A lot.

Well, that, and building a teensy little Metroid themed build, hidden deep beneath the wastelands of The Junkyard!

This has probably been the biggest thing I've attempted in SL so far, with lots of animated textures and ambient sounds. I've been posting lots of screenshots over at Snapzilla, and even been working on some freebies for intrepid explorers to find! I'll be adding more, including animated metroids floating around, but feel free to take a peek!

Monday, September 10, 2007

Ok so I had requests for chicken. Here is a very flexible chicken dinner that is filling, healthy, and easy to make. If you are worried about the amount of leftovers you might have by using a whole chicken, you can easily use instead boneless chicken breasts. Try to use skin-on thick kind. It will do better in the oven. Oh and if you hate olives (or just this type), it won't hurt anything to omit them or substitute them for a different kind.

Tools:

Roasting pan (glass or metal is fine or you can use disposable foil ones. Really though its more economical to invest in a roasting pan!)Mixing Bowl2qt or larger potAluminum foilSharp knifeMixing tool

Ingredients:

1/2 cup oil (olive is best)

2 lemons

4 cloves garlic (more if you like it)

8-10 fresh rosemary sprigs (you can use dried spice if you want)

salt and pepper

Whole chicken rinsed well and patted dry

1 1/2 lbs new potatoes

1 cup kalamata olives

1 onion

package baby carrots

1 box rice or couscous (instant is fine!)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Roll lemons on a flat surface with the palm of your hand. This loosens up the meat of the fruit and squeezes it to make it easier to juice. Slice one lemon in half and squeeze both halves to drain juice into bowl. Throw away unused lemon and seeds. Stir in oil, garlic, rosemary, salt, and pepper.

Open your chicken, wash, and pat dry. Make sure to remove the extras baggy from inside of the bird. If you are into making giblet gravies or soup stocks these can be bagged and stored in the freezer. For those who have kitties, chop these bits up raw and serve to kitties. This is a tasty and very healthy treat for cats. Dogs sometimes enjoy it too.

Place the cleaned chicken breast up in the roasting pan. Now the gross part. Using the knife, cut a small slit in the skin between the neck of the chicken and the breast. We are going to prepare the chicken to be seasoned so that the seasoning mix sits above the meat and beneath the skin. To do this we will do what is called a blunt dissection. Its not hard and its not even that gross. Using your hand, slide it around under the skin to separate it from the meat around the breast and legs. When you have made a good pocket, put about 2/3 of the oil mix inside. Using your hand, smooth it around so that it covers most of the meat evenly. Ok, gross part over! Pull the skin back up to the neck and if you want you can secure it there with a toothpick or two.

Quarter the potatoes and chop the onion. Put these in the roasting pan around the chicken. Open your package of carrots and put a few handfuls of these into the pan as well. Toss in the olives (you can buy pitted ones if you don't want to pit them yourself) Put the rest of the oil mix over the veggies and mix them up with it. I like to add a bit more oil at this point to the vegetables or if you prefer you can give them a good spray down with a cooking spray like PAM.

Half the other lemon and stuff the cavity of the chicken with these.

Put the pan into the oven on the center rack and cook until juices run clear (about 1 hour). Check every so often and mix the veggies around so they cook even.

Cook rice or couscous by the directions on the package.

When the chicken is done set it out to rest for a few min. This lets the juices settle back into the meat before carving.

Serve up and enjoy! This goes great with a nice green salad.Suggested wine: Sauvignon Blanc, Grenache, or Zinfandel